


Your Lover

by orphan_account



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Candles by Daughter, Drama, F/M, Love, Romance, The Prince of Winterfell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4091533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She should have remained silent, should have walked away when he made his confession, thrown anything she might have felt for him in the cold and stoney fires of the lies she would tell him. The lies that spoke of a one sided attraction, the ones she had been telling everyone else who inquired and insisting they were true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Lover

Well I have brittle bones it seems

She was so weak, so human. She had spent her entire life trying to hide her thoughts, girding her impulses and keeping a level head above the noise that had once consumed her life. It had become to much to bear, yes, when she was asked to remain silent and express no opinion unless specifically questioned, but Talisa had never been an impulsive person. She had a sharp tongue that could run away from her if she wasn't careful, but she was never a hot head. That was why she was so confused when she had woken from the daze of passionate kisses and hungry moans that had ensued from the beautiful words of 'I don't want to marry the Frey Girl', to realise what she had done... what they had done. She had sworn to herself she was content in solitude, that she was never meant to be held. To be held was to be oppressed and restrained.

I bite my tongue and torch my dreams

She should have remained silent, should have walked away when he made his confession, thrown anything she might have felt for him in the cold and stoney fires of the lies she would tell him. The lies that spoke of a one sided attraction, the ones she had been telling everyone else who inquired and insisting they were true. Her tent mates, the other three assistant nurses that aided the Maesters in their work on the frontline, had noticed the way the young king looked on her, even inquired after her, and she had informed them every time that she did not respond to any feelings he might have. Lies, and she had known it, but they never knew. Talisa Maegyr had been suckled with milk and lies, been forced fed them as she began to walk and talk and had repeated them as life drew on. But now, now she was being completely honest with a man she had just met and it scared her how much he knew about her. 

Have a little voice to speak with

They knew each other so well, even if they had only just met. She even felt that he was talking to her more than he had talked to anyone else, had shared personal thoughts his men would scoff at. The self doubting, the knowledge that he was not meant to be this. Knowing he was doing wrong by killing. He still did it, but she knew there was no way around it. His innocence, his youth, his focus on the present, not the future... All the attributes Talisa had once laughed at and dismissed him as a passing thing, they were his best compared to the others that played the game politics created. She would even like to think she had made him more confident, in a small but memorable way.

And a mind of thoughts and secrecy

She knew his lords distrusted her, loathed her even. They saw a foreigner, a harlot that was here to try her luck for some finer commodities in the guise of a nurse. A spy, even. She had heard them talk. She almost wished she was a spy, than the emotions she was feeling would be fake. But the men, the lowly farmers, the paige boys and squires, they loved her. Not because they were infatuated with her, though all of the young women nursing had found that liberties were assumed appropriate by the wounded and they had struggled to bat off occasionally forceful advances of men with less manners than they were accustomed to. They loved her because of the sincerity in which she cared for the sick and dying, the lives she had saved before she saw to the petty injuries of lordlings. She didn't lie about that. 

Cause we both know I'll never be your lover

Between heated breaths 'Your Grace' had become 'Robb', but come morning Robb would stop being Robb, and Talisa knew it even as he pulled her closer to him as he rolled off her, nuzzling into her neck with fingers moving through her hair. He couldn't be Robb to her, not after the new day dawned. He would be the King in the North and Trident, and she would still be the healer he met at Oxcross. That was all she was in Westeros. The name 'Maegyr' meant nothing. She'd never be anything more than that.

I only bring the heat

She was destructive and inhuman. She was no diplomat, no moderate and modest feminine beauty, no accepting lady who would sit in silence and stay still. She was Talisa, Little Tali who would run through the Elephant Pond in the third garden, fully clothed in the sweltering heat when her father would not let her go down to the river, the girl who no man wanted, the daughter her mother cursed for doubting R'hllor and loved for existing, the noble women who did not believe in slavery, and the tigress who pretended to herself she was the essence of passivity, the way of the Rhoyne River. She was outspoken, headstrong and insolent. She was not meant to be a mans wife, lover or otherwise. 

Company under cover

But it was so blissful, soaking in the warmth radiating off the man... The man she loved, the man she loved with all her heart, though she could barely admit it to herself, let alone him, as she looked on his beautiful face as he slipped into slumber. She could lie in his arms for ever, eternally intertwined with no trifles such as clothing separating them. Winter is coming, those were his family words and it was true in the Riverlands at least, but the howling of the wind that seemed to melt into the occasional call of a nearby direwolf did not reach the ears of the pair. They were intoxicated with each other, and Talisa knew that she wanted to be with this being who could near swallow her soul in a single kiss and forced her to reconsider the meaning behind existence. 

Filling space in your sheets

Then Talisa remembered the Frey girl and her looming presence, the fact that in the end her Robb would be, well, her Robb. Talisa would not know his touch for infinity, but the girl would. The girl of the bridge would be entitled to feel his touch on a regular basis. Would he want to touch her? She wondered as her eyes trailed the strong line of his jaw and up to his closed eyelids that concealed two windows to the sky. The idea that he would want to perform his husbandly duty, enact his kingly right to... She was a foreigner, an outsider with no claim to any affection, delicious touch or kindly word from any westerosi, let alone the King in the North. A healer from Volantis did not earn even a second glance from a King. A small part of her might argue that she was not just a healer and he was not just a king. She was Talisa Maegyr of the Tigers, Daughter of the Black Wall, and he was Robb Stark, the first man in power Talisa had met that well... Had good intentions. Still, even as who she was born Talisa did not deserve someone as good and honest as the man in her arms. She couldn't even look herself in the mirror, couldn't abide the flicker of candlelight as it meant all could see what she looked like. The man or king or wolf she loved would never return her feelings, nor should he. Nothing could ever come from the mistake they had just made. 

So, please just blow out all the candles, blow out all the candles

Talisa did not know how utterly wrong she was about to be proved, nor how much joy being wrong would bring her.


End file.
